Bourgeoisie Revolution

[Long Dong Silver]

I was talking with my history teacher about revolutions throughout the past, and she made the interesting point that, to our knowledge, no revolutionary leader in the history of socialism/communism has been a proletariat. They have all been members of the bourgeoisie or the petite bourgeoisie. Is this true, or just cappie propaganda? If it is true, why hasn’t a worker ever taken the lead?

[red cat]

Stalin was a cobbler's son.

EDIT: I forgot Eugène Pottier. Transport worker.

If you consider teachers as workers then you will get plenty of examples from the topmost leadership of many revolutions . Even otherwise, workers and peasants have been important leaders throughout the history of communist movements.

[Long Dong Silver]

...who owned his own workshop - petty bourgeoisie

[WeAreReborn]

Do you mean someone who lead a revolution or a revolutionary thinker? Anyways, it could be because if you were living in poverty back then chances are you weren't properly educated. Obviously things are a little bit different now, but anyways Durruti was a proletariat, at age 14 he worked on the railroad.

[red cat]

...who owned his own workshop - petty bourgeoisie

If that becomes the primary parameter for distinguishing between a worker and a petit-bourgeois then school-teachers are workers.

[red cat]

Talking of communist thinkers, the three laws of dialectics were first stated by a German worker.

[Long Dong Silver]

If that becomes the primary parameter for distinguishing between a worker and a petit-bourgeois then school-teachers are workers.
I'm not sure I follow, are you saying school teachers own the schools they work in?

[Os Cangaceiros]

This (http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1980/mar-apr/rejai.html) might interest you.

[red cat]

I'm not sure I follow, are you saying school teachers own the schools they work in?

No, I mean that if you consider school-teachers as workers, then you have nothing to worry about. Mao, Prachanda, Ganpaty etc. are teachers.

[Chris]

While they didn't lead succesful revolutions (unless you count resistance movement against the Nazis during WW2) the majority of the leadership in the Norwegian Communist Party has been working class. In particular a lot of partyleaders have been lumberjacks (Emil Løvlien, Sverre Støstad and some more).

[Magón]

Emma Goldman was pretty Prol. all through childhood.

[Volcanicity]

Tito worked in a variety of factories and was also a dockyard worker.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I got the impression, thats it is about 50/50, but far frome all. As menthioned Durruti, Goldman, Stalin, Tito had all proletarian backround, to ad i will also say Ernst Thälmann (harboe worker) and wasnt Ho Chi Minh a sailor and baker?
Anyway this kind of statements are always used to undermine socialism.

[Widerstand]

Why does it matter?

[bailey_187]

Quite of few of the Eastern bloc leaders came from working class backgrounds.

[thriller]

While maybe not a strict "revolutionary", Debs dropped out of school to become a worker at age 14 and helped to found IWW, SPUSA, Social-Democrats and fought for unions against the US military.

[Streetlight]

Why does it matter?

+1...If they are willing to further the workers movement and willing to give up what they have for the greater cause, they are an ally to me.

[Volcanicity]

Why does it matter?
It matter's if a teacher is trying to brain-wash school kid's into believing things about Communist's that just are'nt true.

[Rusty Shackleford]

engels inherited a factory but it doesnt mean he was working in the interests of the propertied.

castro was a lawyer.

they were class conscious, and conscious of the role in history that class antagonisms play. they, like many other propertied communists, were aware of the fact that their position in society is not the progressive one and therefore fought for progress.


not all workers have the time to dedicate to study and theorizing. there are more immediate matters at hand. This is not saying that workers are unintelligent, it is acknowledging the fact that being in an exploited wage-slave struggling to make ends meet leaves hardly any time for such things.

this might also be why a decent portion of american communists may come from labor aristocrat families because they have more time to study. it doesnt mean they are bad. they are expressing solidarity with the working class as a whole.


Peter Kropotkin wasnt known as the "Prince Anarchist" for nothing. he was a god damn prince in russia. he renounced that though.

[scarletghoul]

The classic exchange between Zhou and Khruschev springs to mind..

[Zanthorus]

The leaders of the Communist League were skilled-workers and artisans. Karl Schapper was a trained forester, Heinrich Bauer was a shoemaker and Joseph Moll was a watchmaler. Gabriel Myasnikov, who joined the Bolshevik party in 1905, was a member of the 1918 Left-Communist fraction, and formed the Workers' Group of the Russian Communist Party (A Left-Communist opposition to the Stalinised Bolshevik party) was a metalworker from the Urals. Amadeo Bordiga was an engineer. Most of the members of the Italian Left Fraction in exile were workers. So it's not completely unheard of.


This (http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1980/mar-apr/rejai.html) might interest you.

The proffesional revolutionary is not a character unique to the 20th century. The type first arose in the two decades leading up to the 1848 revolutions in Europe. Buonarotti's book on Babeuf's conspiracy of the equals was a big influence in this regard. Blanqui's endless conspiracies and sects are quite famous. 1848: Year of Revolutions by Mike Rapport discusses this phenomenon. He also counterposes the 'proffesional revolutionary' type to the French revolutionaries who were apparently by and large forced into events against their will, which would seem to contradict that authors claim to have derived his ideas in part from a study of France in 1789. I don't know a great deal about the French revolution so I can't really comment on that.